Hacker News Reader

Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

I've seen this conspiracy theory many times, but no one has yet explained how a day or two delay will stop mailin voting.

People also somehow think that the post office won't be able to deliver so much mail. Which also doesn't make sense, it's a single envelope per house, they deliver more junk mail than that.

Edit: I should add I'm 100% in favor of mailin votes always, not just now. I simply do not believe that this postal slowdown is in any way connected to those who oppose it. And that's for the simple reason that it can't accomplish that.

View on HN

There's no conspiracy theory. It's historical record the lengths this country has gone to disenfranchise votes: 3/5ths personhood, poll taxes, literacy tests, multiple hour-long queues, shuttering most poll stations for large populations, warehouses left full of voting machines, and, seriously, just go look at Dan Crenshaw's district. You don't have to "stop mailin voting," you just have to make it unreliable and burdensome.

There's no conspiracy here, it's out in the public for all to see.

For comparison, it takes me about 15 minutes to go voting in Germany. That includes walking to the polling station, someone checking my id and me checking a few boxes on a paper ballot.

There is usually no queue and we don't have voting machines because they can be easily manipulated, as has been demonstrated a number of times.

Elections are held on Sundays, when most shops are closed, so that everyone can participate.

This is my experience in the US, other than elections not being held on Sunday.

In the US, elections are held by the states, not the national government. So it is up to the states where and how many polling stations there are. Depending on the party in charge at the state level, this has been used to make it more difficult for certain sectors of the population to vote.

> this has been used to make it more difficult for certain sectors of the population to vote.

Yes, it has happened. But based on the Media usually only finding a story or two with that, it's very rare, and not the normal experience. i.e. if it was more prevalent there would be more articles, but usually I only notice 1 or 2 in an election cycle.

In times of COVID, however, mail only voting is the best alternative.

And the USPS has informed states that it may take up to 2 weeks to deliver mailed ballots.

What that means is for mail in votes to count (which again, will be more popular considering COVID) on Nov 4th, you will need to mail your vote by Oct 20th to guarantee it reaches assuming USPS is correct in its 2 week estimate.

The current administration is already laying down the foundation for votes that reach after Nov 4, even if they were postmarked before (which I believe is all that is needed) to be rejected. He tweeted today that the votes must be counted by the end of Nov 4 otherwise they would be illegitimate.

> He tweeted today that the votes must be counted by the end of Nov 4 otherwise they would be illegitimate.

He tweets lots of stupid things. It's not actually true. Each state can make their own rules on postmark vs receipt date.

People seem to forget that voting in this country was designed to work in a time where it took 2 months to count all the votes, with the result arriving by horse. Nothing has changed in the rules since then.

People will be annoyed at waiting if there is a delay, but nothing will actually break.

It's the same in the US, every election I've gone to there have been no lines at all, and it takes just a few minutes.

When there are lines (and it does happen) you can bet the media will be all over it. So if you see 5 stories about lines, then you know that the other 10 thousand or so locations had no lines, and just 5 did.

I think if you're going to make such a broad and sweeping statements then you need to provide some actual proof.

https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/the-2018-voting-experien...

(And note I am replying to someone who claimed "multiple hour-long queues", which is completely false.)

https://fortune.com/2020/07/24/usps-mail-delivery-postmaster...

From what I understand this is coupled with a delay in counting of mail in votes.

And with states having a cutoff period after which the undelivered votes will not be counts. If you can delay a significant number of votes beyond that period, you’ve managed to block someone’s votes.

Especially pernicious is that many vulnerable people who previously would be unable to vote (no car, no real social contact, etc) now theoretically would be able to vote, which could be cut off.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com